The situation for this kind of interface is much more advanced (for
economic time series data) than has been suggested in other postings.
Several of the organizations you mention support SDMX and I believe
there is a working R interface to SDMX which has not yet been made
public. A more complete list of organizations that I think already have
working server side support for SDMX is: the OECD, Eurostat, the ECB,
the IMF, the UN, the BIS, the Federal Reserve Board, the World Bank, the
Italian Statistics agency, and to a small extent by the Bank of Canada.
I have a working API to several time series databases (TS* packages on
CRAN), and a partially working interface to SDMX, but have postponed
further development of that in the hope that the already working code
will be made available. Please see http://tsdbi.r-forge.r-project.org/
for more details. I would, of course, be happy to have other developers
involved in this project. If you think you can contribute then see
r-forge.r-project.org for details on how to join projects.
Paul
On 12-01-14 06:00 AM, r-help-requ...@r-project.org wrote:
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:44:07 +0530
From: Benjamin Weber<m...@bwe.im>
To:r-help@r-project.org
Subject: [R] The Future of R | API to Public Databases
Message-ID:
<cany9q8k+zyvrkjjgbjp+jtnyaw15gqkocivyvpgwgyqa9dl...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Dear R Users -
R is a wonderful software package. CRAN provides a variety of tools to
work on your data. But R is not apt to utilize all the public
databases in an efficient manner.
I observed the most tedious part with R is searching and downloading
the data from public databases and putting it into the right format. I
could not find a package on CRAN which offers exactly this fundamental
capability.
Imagine R is the unified interface to access (and analyze) all public
data in the easiest way possible. That would create a real impact,
would put R a big leap forward and would enable us to see the world
with different eyes.
There is a lack of a direct connection to the API of these databases,
to name a few:
- Eurostat
- OECD
- IMF
- Worldbank
- UN
- FAO
- data.gov
- ...
The ease of access to the data is the key of information processing with R.
How can we handle the flow of information noise? R has to give an
answer to that with an extensive API to public databases.
I would love your comments and ideas as a contribution in a vital discussion.
Benjamin
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